New tourism strat­egy

THE wo­man who would be the next tourism min­is­ter if the LNP wins the up­com­ing state elec­tion made a fly­ing visit to Port Dou­glas yes­ter­day to meet with lo­cal small busi­nesses.

Jann Stuckey and LNP can­di­date for Cook David Kemp­ton walked Macrossan St talk­ing to small busi­nesses be­fore catch­ing up with around 20 tourism op­er­a­tors at the Sea Tem­ple.

The visit was to in­tro­duce the LNP’S tourism strat­egy “to re­turn Queens­land’s tourism in­dus­try to num­ber one” and get some feed­back on small busi­ness con­cerns. Ms Stuckey has promised the tourism in­dus­try will get a “hand up not a hand­out” by help­ing the in­dus­try help it­self - although the LNP is yet to com­mit more fund­ing for the ail­ing tourism in­dus­try if it wins of­fice.

“We need proper re­ports and fund­ing linked to desti­na­tion level vis­i­tor sur­veys to in­form govern­ment and in­dus­try,” she said. Ms Stuckey said as part of the LNP’S strat­egy, tourism would be­come one of the four pil­lars of Queens­land’s econ­omy.

Penin­sula Bou­tique Ho­tel owner Sh­eryn Blund­stone told Ms Stuckey she wants a com­mit­ment to re­struc­ture tourism and fo­cus north of Cairns as well as proper reporting mech­a­nisms.

“Also we need sup­port on a state ba­sis from them to lobby ef­fec­tively at a fed­eral level, make us vi­able and com­pet­i­tive as a re­gion com­pared to other cap­i­tal cities and in­ter­na­tional des­ti­na­tions,” she said.